June 2022 Newsletter · 4:41am Jun 2nd, 2022
Hi everyone,
Before I get into the fanfic status stuff, I want to take a moment to acknowledge and talk about Uvalde. Some of you may recall I live in Texas. I'm not from Uvalde but one of the bigger cities near it. Not only that, my daughter is only a little younger than most of the kids who were killed.
This massacre has shaken me and strikes all too close to home. Those poor kids...I'm just...it's wrong. It's so very, very wrong. I want this country to change and prevent such a horror from ever happening again...and yet...this has happened before with Sandy Hook in 2012. Back then, I was pregnant. One of the really difficult things about this particular horror is hearing how the police waited so long, how those kids called 911 for help. I'm going to see what I can do to help make a world with less gun violence.
Uvalde makes headlines due to how extreme it was, but gun violence is a sadly regular occurrence in this country that does not get as much coverage. I follow Nelba Márquez-Greene, one of the moms who had a daughter killed at Sandy Hook, on Twitter. She has made that point repeatedly, so I think it's worth repeating as well.
Even while drafting this newsletter, between edits, there three different reported shootings happening today (hospital in OK, Wal-Mart in PA, high school in CA).
It's awful and overwhelming and unbearable.
But bear it we do...and even now, I move onto why I'm initially sharing this newsletter...so, so, so sorry.
I did not publish any new stuff since the last newsletter, but that's because of sorting through my health issues and focusing a lot of my energy once again on the audiobook chapters.
I have an endoscopy scheduled for July 26th, so I am doing everything I can to finish as much of the audiobook chapters as I can before then. My pain has lessened compared to when it was really bad during April. With the hope that whatever is found is manageable, I plan to focus the later part of the year on wrapping up the text of The Master Mev if possible.
I might get distracted or tempted to do another Halloween vampire story, but I would definitely try to make sure I can do both it and TMM. I would need a committed idea too.
Revelation Into Mercury
Even though I did not publish any new chapters during May, Chapters 15 and 16 are 99% done. I'm waiting on one small retake for Chapter 15. I also need to do a small retake of my own for Chapter 16. I've laid out a schedule and goal for re-recording my narration (and some voices). The hope was to finish that by July 20th, but I've been moving fast lately and could even get it done by mid-to-late June at my current pace.
Something that did happen behind the scenes was that I decided to stop using the voice work from Kat_Woods who played Rainbow Dash, Starlight Glimmer, and Rarity. As such, I'm taking on those roles myself.
Writing - The Master Mev
There has been very little progress this month. I've got a reference and started a sketch for the Chapter 78 picture. So, I have worked on some of it, even if not much. I do expect to move at a better pace once I finish up certain things on the audiobook material that looks doable in the next month or two.
Closing
- RIM re-recording narration is almost done
- TMM text will hopefully be back in action sometime this summer
- Uvalde is in my heart and on my mind
Err. Is it some kind of post-irony, or you seriously don't know the correct name of Ukraine?
5661595
... Uvalde is a town in Texas, in the United States...
5661613
Oh. Sorry, my bad. The "killed children" part souned too familiar, so I jumped to conclusion.
5661616
... Ok.
I have blocked Solid Punch, but I think it's important to note for the record, for other readers...
Their TOP priority in their comment was NOT to ask what happened in Uvalde, not to look up what happened in Uvalde on their own time, not to have any sympathy or concern for the actual content of what I said but instead to question if I knew the correct name of Ukraine. That is messed up, generally wrong, dense, and lacking in compassion.